“How could you?” The words cracked from her like thunder.
“Everly won’t disrespect you again,” I swore, my canines lengthening at the thought of my friend hurting my mate.
“Everly?” Her voice snapped like a whip. She rubbed her hands roughly over her face, smearing tears that still fell. “You think I’m crying because ofher?”
My stomach dropped. “I?—”
“I care little what your friend thinks of me.” Her eyes blazed, anger and hurt coiling behind them in white swirls. “It’syouwho hurt me.”
The world tilted. “Me?” My voice trembled as I staggered while horror and disbelief twisted inside me. “What did I do, Lolli?”
She dipped her head, shaking it without meeting my eyes.
I fisted my hands, willing myself to remain calm, but being the cause of her pain was a torment unlike any I’d ever suffered.
“Lolli,” I begged, reaching for her hand. She pulled back, and my hand dropped uselessly at my side. “Tell me what I did wrong. Please.” I dragged a hand through my hair, my fingers biting into my scalp as panic spiraled inside me. “I don’t know what I did. How can I fix it if I don’t know?”
Because this. Us. It couldn’t already be over. Not when we’d just begun.
She fidgeted with the hem of my shirt, but she wouldn’t grant me the mercy of looking at me.
I stepped closer, not too fast, so it remained her choice if she needed her space.
“If this is about what Everly said?—”
“This isn’t about Everly.” Her gaze snapped up. “It’s about what you said.”
The accusation knocked the wind from my lungs.
I desperately searched her face. “What did I say? Tell me, Lolli. Please. I can’t stand here and watch you bleed over my words and not even know what I said to hurt you.”
She wrapped her arms around herself, her shoulders curling forward. “You said—you spoke about us as if we were temporary.How could you do that, Brenton? I tell you how I feel about you, how I can’t live another beat without you, and you act as if letting me go would cost you nothing.”
My hands flexed at my side, useless against the ache spreading through me as I remembered the angry words I’d tossed at Everly.
“If things between Finley and me don’t work out, I won’t turn to you.”
I’d said them with only one goal in mind: to get Everly to back off from Finley.
Finley couldn’t possibly believe I thought we might be temporary. That losing her would cost menothing.
“Lolli.” My throat was raw with emotions, my voice nothing but gravel. “You don’t understand. I—” I raked a hand through my hair, my chest heaving with the weight of the words I couldn’t form fast enough. “Every day I spent without you was a life half lived. Do you honestly think I could let you go as if you mean nothing? When you are everything.” A snarl tore through me at the shame that coiled and tightened around my chest. “I would burn down our very kingdom, shatter every realm from existence before I could let you go again. I would beg at your feet for a mercy I don’t deserve. Now that I know you choose me . . . don’t ever mistake me for a male who could live without you.”
Her breath trembled out of her, and for a few beats she just stared at me, her expression torn between hope and pain.
“Then why say it?” she asked. “Why utter any words about us not working out?”
“Because I needed Everly to stop.” It came out rough, the edges sharp with barely contained fury. “She would’ve kept pressing and pressing you, and I needed to put it to a stop. So I said something I knew would wound her, something that would shut her down. But gods, Finley”—I cupped her cheek, gentlymoving her face so she looked at me—“I never believed those words. Whenever you’re in my arms, you feel like forever.”
Her magic stirred beneath her skin, shimmering and vibrating across her hands and arms.
Her lashes lowered, and another tear slipped out. “We’ve spent a lifetime hurting each other. Of turning away and ignoring each other. We’re not the same younglings from our past. For this, us, to work, we have to learn who we are now. We have to get to know each other and build trust. I want us to work, Brent.”
“I do too.”
She drew in a shaky breath, stepping closer to me. My heart hammered, the threads of our bond tightening inside me in anticipation. Her trembling hands rose to my chest, her eyes catching mine before she pressed her lips to mine.
It wasn’t the kiss our bond demanded, all heat and hunger. It was soft. Tentative.
